The early history of West African highlife music

Abstract

Highlife is one of the myriad varieties of acculturated popular dance-music styles that have been emerging from Africa this century and which fuse African with Western (i.e. European and American) and islamic influences. Besides highlife, other examples include kwela, township jive and mbaqanga from South Africa, chimurenga from Zimbabwe, the benga beat from Kenya, taraab music from the East African coast, Congo jazz (soukous) from Central Africa, rai music from North Africa, juju and apala music from western Nigeria, makossa from the Cameroons and mbalax from Senegal.